GNU social (most recently called StatusNet, and previously Laconica[4]) is a FLOSSmicroblogging server written in PHP that implements the OStatus standard for interoperation between installations. While offering functionality similar to Twitter, GNU social seeks to provide the potential for open, inter-service and distributed communications between microblogging communities. Enterprises and individuals can install and control their own services and data.[5][6]

The first deployment (as Laconica) was the Identi.ca open-microblogging service. Hosted by original StatusNet creators StatusNet Inc., Identi.ca offered free accounts to the public and serves as the co-flagship (along with freelish.us) for the installable version of StatusNet. The site has migrated to pump.io.

Version 0.9.0, released March 3, 2010, added support for OStatus, a new distributed update standard superseding OpenMicroBlogging.[10][11]

In December 2012, Evan Prodromou announced "a wind-down" of the status.net hosted service so he could concentrate on a new open source activity stream server, pump.io.[12] Consequently, Identi.ca will also be changed to pump.io. All in the last year before May 1, 2013 active accounts will be migrated.[13] On July 10, 2013 Identi.ca switched over to running pump.io.[14]

June 8, 2013 it was announced StatusNet would be adopted by and renamed GNU social.[15]

Laconica's name was a reference to the Laconic phrase, a particularly concise or terse statement the likes of which are famously attributed to the leaders of Sparta (Laconia being the Greek region containing Sparta). In microblogging, all messages are forced to be very short due to the ~140 character limit on message size, thus they are all de facto laconic phrases.

^"README file". Retrieved 2015-02-09. ...under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.